/btg/ BattleTech General

Question: House medium mechs.

It seems to me that the Davions have the Enforcer, the Lyrans the Griffon, and the Kuritans love the Wolverine. What about the last two, what's their taste in mediums? And what about the FRR and the Periphery?

>>51518058
The CC has the Vindicator and the FWL love the Trebuchet, iirc.

>>51518058
FWL has Wolverine and Cappies have VINDICATORS FOR DAYS. DC aren't that fond of mediums for retarded reasons.

FRR had a lot of ex-DC stuff so same as them, but in general minor powers/peripherats use whatever they can get their dirty paws on. MoC does have a decent number of shads, though.

>>51518058
FWL kinda make a spread of everything for mediums.
You're just as likely to find Griffins or Wolverines as their primary medium, as well as Hermes IIs, Trebuchets, Hunchbacks, and the odd Cicada, etc.

The only mediums I associate with DC are the SLDF mediums the comguards gave to them. Namely Crabs and Kintaros.

DC has a lot of medium mech variants with interesting results, namely the SHD K and TBT K. There's also the PXH K.

>>51518058
Caps love the vindicator, FWL likes the trebuchet, but also likes griffins and wolverines and other stuff.
In the periphery
Taurians: Griffins
Magistracy: Shads
Outworlds: whatever they can get

>>51518141
It's not 10 first class crew quarters, it's 220 first class crew quarters that weigh 10 tons each. Idea is that it's got very nice accommodations for the crew.

The SCLs are meant to help against ASFs rather than be a true threat to enemy warships. SCLs only suffer +1 to target small craft, while NLs still take a sizable +3 to hit. Also this was before I knew that AMS contributed to fire control costs; if you don't count the AMS each arc has 20 weapons and isn't paying for fire control, though of course I'd need to revise that now.

The fuel loads are the suggested amounts from Stratops so, I shrug. And yeah I realize the cargo bay is especially small for the corvette. I suppose that can be quickpatched by increasing the tonnage a bit and putting any savings into the cargo bay there. I'm not a huge fan of the "10% tonnage as cargo space" star league thing to be perfectly honest though. Especially when you look at the listed cargo space for a lot of dropships, they clearly weren't designed with a care for that in mind. I haven't heard of these CampOps rules. Ugh. How much percentage of tonnage do I need to dedicate to cargo now?

Thing about decreasing SI is if I do that I suddenly lose quite a bit of armor. And as for the layout, yeah that can easily be changed. It was mostly a placeholder because I don't know a ton about good warship armor layouts. So thank you for that bit of help! I look forward to your reply.

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>>51518563

Ah, OK on the crew quarters. AAA mode with NLs doesn't bother me that much due to the range bands you can start shooting with NLs proper as opposed to SCLs, but I'd advise trimming those a bit to get the FC mass down a bit. The fuel loads in StratOps assume you'll be getting most of your fuel out of cargo too, there are SLN ships with 1kt bunkers, which won't get you far.

The new rules in CampOps for spare parts are .1% of unit mass per month, so a 10% fraction will get you through most of a year. Or a 6-month cruise with a safety margin. With fuel you need ~550 tons a month to stay operational. Then you've got to account for consumables, which bay personnel like ASF pilots and techs will bite into pretty badly. Those are on p. 44 of SO.

Any way, here is an unfucked Sovetskii Soyuz. Design notes as follows
-NGRs in nose for high-speed pass attacks and to beef up the general firepower
-Larger NAC and NPPC bays to live up to the fluff about heavy puch
-Armour improved to effective maximum for IFA; still not great but almost twice as tough as the original
-Lots more SC and ASF
-Cargo and parts for up to a year for ship and integral crew
-All crew and bay personnel get quarters and escape craft
-NCSS are so good as to be obligatory, get them on everything
-Has 5 MASH Units which I forgot to put into the screen grab
-Broadside and Aft AMS have additional ammo so they can fire into the adjacent side arcs and make them nuke-proof

Basically you want ballistic weapons to the fore for the damage multipliers on high-speed passes and then energy weapons to the sides and aft to avoid decreases in the same.

>>51519022
>-NGRs in nose for high-speed pass attacks and to beef up the general firepower

Doesn't the SovSoy design predate the introduction of NGRs?

>>51519022

Herp a derp. 10% of a vessel's mass will get you through 100 months. However, the intent with Campaign Ops' ammo consumption for practice rules more than make up for the reduction there since you go through 1/4 of your total ammo every 3 months minimum to keep your crew skills up.

I kinda keep meaning to ask Xotl if that is meant to apply to AMS as well since practicing with AMS seems pretty dumb, but whatever.

Under the new rules anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 tons of cargo for most ships should suffice unless you've really gone mental with ammo counts. Getting involved in combat will obviously eat up those stores more rapidly but I imagine that after any real battle most ships will head for drydocks any way, with things like the Exodus Road a definite rarity.

Also for SLN ships I'd put 35kt as the absolute minimum for cargo because that allows them to carry the Experimental SDS Jammers which weigh 30kt.

>>51519083

SovSoy is from 2742. NGRs seem to be pretty old, stuff from the 2500s have them.

>>51519127
>>51519083

TacOps says NGRs are available from 2488 on, or 3057ish with LosTech going by intro dates for the new IS ships.

>>51519103
25% of ammo every 3 months minimum? I mean, I get that they need to train/stay sharp but having the amount of ammo consumed be a percentage of ammo carried seems kind of silly. Like, a crew can get the same benefit from firing 5 rounds of ammo if you have only 20 shots as they would from 50 rounds of ammo if you have 200 shots. I would imagine a better way to do it would be to require X shots from each weapon as a flat amount but eh.

>>51519022
Thanks again for the feedback. I don't quite see the reasoning with bothering to fire at extreme range though, since that's a +6 to hit mod right? Factoring in enemy ship's profile and your own thrust and it seems like most of the time at extreme range you'll need 12+ to hit. So not being able to fire out that far and minimizing to-hit penalties with SCLs on AAA mode seemed like a good idea to me. Then again I suppose I could just rely on the two regiments of carried ASFs for dealing with enemy fighters. I'll definitely give it some thought. Any ideas on what to replace the SCLs with? Also I would of course reduce to 12 AMS per facing.

Also, for the corvette do you think it's functional given its intended purpose of anti-ASF escort?

And do you have any tips for how to cram more armor on ships? I've always really felt like the canon ones are armored with tissue paper and it's never stopped bugging me, that's why the ones I design tend to have high SI, to allow them to carry more armor.

What do you mean about damage multipliers for high speed passes with ballistic weapons? Where is that in the rules?

Lastly, where can I get whatever program you're using to give those readout sheets? It seems like it'd be a lot easier than fiddling with my homemade spreadsheet. Sorry for all the questions, but I rarely get to talk with folks about BT warship stuff.

Okay, for all you AtBers out there, I just had a special event happen: Bonus: Civilian Vehicle. Had an error though "Could not load unit". What's the deal? What's supposed to happen here?

>>51519378

25% of ammo every three months is reasonable enough for ground units where that might only be 2-3 tons. Once you start looking at WarShips with 50-shot magazines for big guns it starts getting real dumb real fast.

Mostly I suspect they wanted a flat figure for everything since the crunch was already getting autistic by that point in CampOps.

Extreme Range can be +6, but Bracketing can bring that down to +2. Then there's the modifiers for shooting at small targets, but it's better than nothing. SCLs in AAA mode or Capital/Sub-Cap missiles are the best options short of strapping on a ton of GRs or whatever though. Realistically the only solution to enemy ASF is to bring your own, WSes and DSes simply can't carry enough firepower to ward them off even at Leviathan II levels and you also need Leviathan II levels of armour to even try it.

The Corvette is OK but you're going to have to pull some SI and armour to give it cargo space. 2.7 kt with that fuel bunkerage isn't enough unless you're only concerned with single-game tabletop performance.

SI and armour is always a picke, canon ships other than the Avalon and other '67 designs and Lev IIs are for shit but then the Lev II goes so far in the other direction it's not even funny. So you're going to have to find a mid-point between them that you're happy with.

Ballistic weapons get damage multipliers in high-speed runs covered on p. 74 of StratOps. If you go fast enough you can get an X4 modifier for your weapons, which is literally the only way to Threshold anything with 706+ armour on a facing (including the Lev II) and about the only realistic hope you've got of ever killing such ships. Unless of course you're a graduate of the Davion College For Naval Arts and subscribe to the ramming/intentional misjump school of thought.

Unfortunately I don't have a program, I've got my own spreadsheet and fill in a .txt by hand and then cut and paste to Paint.

Keep the Qs coming.

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>>51518939

>What happens if your ship gets hit by a Large Mass Driver?

If you've fucked up badly enough to be hit by a weapon with a +2 to-hit penalty that can only attack targets in the nose row, you get everything your dumb ass deserves.

>>51518114
>DC aren't that fond of mediums for retarded reasons

As a long time Drac player, I've always thought of this as DCMS posturing. After all, the signature Drac lights (Jenner and Panther) and their signature heavy (Dragon) are all practically mediums anyway.

>"My prefecture for a basic Dragon-1N with a PPC!"

>>51519543
The Expanse season 2 kicked off tonight.

How I do wish Aerotech more resembled this system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpfCkkKP9eE

>>51519788

>Extreme Range can be +6, but Bracketing can bring that down to +2

*+3. Drunkposting while I make fried rice.

>>51519826

Pretty much does now.

StratOps added missile waypoint launches and ECM, vectored movement has been in since at least AT2.

Epstein drives are also about as magical as the BT fusion engines that power large craft.

BT also has rocks falling and wiping out planets like in later novels in that series.

>>51519543
You're supposed to get a random civilian vehicle. They're generally crappy little APCs. I'd suggest reporting the bug.

>>51519788
It still feels kinda bad to try hitting fighters at those ranged. Even with maximum bracketing you're at +2 and then another +5 for small target, since you cannot combine bracket fire and AAA targeting. That's 11s to hit right there assuming standard 4/5 crew.

I'll change up the Corvette to give it some better cargo space, then. Switching over to 120 SI and 104 armor per facing average (actual amount per facing subject to change) lets me increase the cargo bay to 9996 tons, so there's 4 months supply time. Not great but better I suppose.

Thanks for the insight on armor/SI. I'll work on it some more.

I think as they're advanced optional rules and the fluff states high speed closing engagements are uncommon I'm going to not make them a priority with my ship design, but thank you for pointing it out.

Aw man. Well, would you mind uploading it somewhere? I would really appreciate it.

Other questions... How do you feel about ships having specific roles vs being generalists? What are your thoughts on the maximum ship tonnages, and do you think more ships should be designed closer to the maximum rather than sticking to the sub-1,000,000 range? Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to? What is the purpose of the goggles?

>>51519937
*+3 from bracketing and 12+ to hit.

>>51519826
>Expanse Season 2

mah nigga

New player to the tabletop, but very big player of the MechWarrior and MechCommander games, as well as a huge supporter of Archon Katrina Steiner during the Civil War because House Steiner is clearly the best side to take during the era.

I have a question. Why does /btg/ dislike Catalyst so much?

I see a lot of hate flung their way here, hate I don't see in my playgroup, and it has mostly players who have been playing since the beginning and even one guy who says he was a tester for a lot of the early stuff, on the battletech subreddit and on the official forums. The negativity towards Catalyst in these threads confuse me so I was hoping I could get an explanation.

>>51520011
>Why does /btg/ dislike Catalyst so much?

Corruption, incompetence, and cowardice.

>>51520011
what's really funny is that /btg/ probably has more CGL employees posting here than any other forum

>>51520020
Care to elaborate?

>>51520030
Really?

Design challenge: Make a pirate-manufactured Mech for the Dark age, in the way that Vengeance Inc. makes the Brigand

>>51519937

Might as well roll at 11s though. If it hits you'll get a Threshold on most things, maybe even a Fatal Threshold.

I still think high-speed engagements are worth considering for layouts, ballistics to the front giving way to more energy-based armaments along the broadside and stern. A surprising number of ships are already set up in that way too.

Can't really do anything with my spreadsheets either, it's got my IRL metadata in it since I have a legit copy of Office for work. Trying to strip that out doesn't work, I can always extract my home address, full name, and employer from it. I tried Google Docs once too but that wasn't secure. I like you guys, but I don't want my info out in the wild like that.

With ships I generally go for tonnage and speed to dictate role. Anything over 1 megaton is going to be a bruiser regardless. I would say that anything past 3.5 thrust isn't really worth it, there are no TMMs in space so as long as you can turn 3 hexes or ECHO you're good. 2/3 is usable but on the slow side.

Once you start building past 1.5 megatons things get real silly. You can start doing things like carrying 300+ ASF or have over 1k armour on all facings. The system isn't really set up to handle things like that, fun as they may be for theorycrafting.

>>51520011
Because they have done really badly at making the title thrive. In ways that seem really, really absurd and incompetent. From refusing to actually contact stores to let them know Battletech is in fact still around (after the clickytech age and a lot of people's lack of interest in it, many stores got the impression that the game was dead and no one got the license after WizKids), to interacting badly with the fanbase through their official forums, to generally terrible PR (ask someone about the Damian issue, or Re-engineered lasers, or Heat-resistant armor for more details), to a huge actual case of embezzlement by one employee who they continue to employ to this day (ask someone else about it, I'm too tired to go into it right now).

At least that's why I have a good deal of dislike for them.

>>51520092
>>51520092
Yeah, I suppose. Though it turns out it's 12s base, before target profile. It just seems like most of the time you will not be capable of hitting. I guess if you have energy weapons and nothing better to shoot at ad you "only" need 12s I could see it, but if your big worry is a huge swarm of ASF then nicking one or two of their squadrons seems like it won't do much good, especially with the damage reduction bracketing will do to you. I guess it just comes down to taste.

Hmm, fair enough. I usually like to keep my ships to fairly few different types of weapons if I can (makes sense logistically and helps bookkeeping) so if I have ballistics it's usually a NACboat and they'll end up spread in the various arcs, with some NL or NPPC support.

That's understandable. Disappointing, but understandable. Do you like us enough to recreate the spreadsheet using another program that doesn't have all your RL info? Half joking, half serious.

I suppose speeds greater than 3/5 could be valuable if you're not using Newtonian movement, let you go further and make more turns. But who would play without those?

That's what I had been thinking. It's why when I designed these (I wanted to do a little project of making a series of ships meant to be all used by the same nation as their fleet) I decided to not go too big and keep the ships of the line at or below 1 megaton. There'll be a mandatory setpiece BB/BC that'll be over it of course, but for the most part I wanted to keep things sane-ish.

>>51520182
That's reasonable. Makes sense, which can't be said about that one player I encountered irl who accused Catalyst as having been the reason the whole Unseen thing happened.

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>>51520087

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>>51514019
>several anime mecha series

Gundam is pretty much a given. What other mech shows do you have art books from? If you don't mind me asking, of course.

>>51520247
That's a very silly accusation given that that happened before Catalyst got access to the rights. Really that's Harmony Gold's fault, the company who sued FASA (the original creators of BT) over the rights which FASA had legally obtained. But since here in americaland, lawsuits are decided largely by money, and HG had more money and lawyers... well, you can guess how it went.

>>51520366
I think you might have gotten lost, anon.

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>>51520388
>I think you might have gotten lost, anon.

Not really, just asking the based drawfriend who'd done that Akuma yesterday and other "MWO style" mechs before that.

>>51520210

A -3 bracket on a 20-point NL bay will only reduce it to 8 damage, which is a Threshold even on Eisensturms and a Fatal Threshold on anything up to a Reiver. Odds might not be so great but if you can hit the rewards aren't bad. Really though shooting ASFs with anything but missiles capital weapons wise is a mug's game, it'll make you feel better about what's happening but you won't get very far.

I personally play without vectored movement because of the chaos it can cause, I'd rather know where my units are going and have fine control over them. YMMV but I found the added realism was taking away from fun. Matters more with ASFs though, with WSes it's just a case of saying broadside on as much as possible any way.

>>51520498
Fatal threshold? What do you mean? And yeah, I guess I see what you mean. Seems the best way to deal with them is either missiles or having your own ASFs.

Fair enough. I usually end up playing through megamek which has helpful arrows that show exactly where your ship will end up given its current velocity each turn, which reacts as you plot your movements.

>>51520442

What are #4 and #5?

>>51520611
Verfolger and Hellfire.

>>51520574

Fatal Thresholds are covered on p. 32 of StratOps. Any single hit big enough can kill a fighter outright in addition to other effects.

Missiles will always cause a crit since they always do 2+ damage. You can also nuke the little shits, see how they like it.

Having your own ASFs (lots and lots of Eisensturms for the IS, or Hydaspes for the Clans) is the preferred method of dealing with enemy ASF though.

MegaMek pre-plotting your movement would be quite handy, yeah. From having played a few battles in asteroid fields where half the casualties (or more) came from inadvertently slamming into things at high speeds my group decided to just use the standard movement rules and pretend the final positions were the result of vectoring for the purposes of fluff.

>>51520262
Trade the LPPC and the two MLs for a plain-jane Large, might be cool.

>>51520442
>>51520366
I have the books called:

>"DRAWING ROBOTS"
from books wasabi that pretty much gives a beginners tutorial on drawing gundams (highly applicable to making mechs both classic style and MWO-style), Gundam

>Gundam Wars Project Z
Art support manual, has some nice lineart to look at

>First, Second and Third Sorties, all Macross art books
Real fucking classy pieces here. Quintessential if you want to draw old school battletech/ robotech.

>Gundam - Yuji Kaida art works book
Nice gundam stuff here

>Panzer Angel Gabriel – Naoyuki/Kazutaka Art Book Review
For all your battle armor needs, this guys sketchy drawings are gospel

>Elysium, art of the film
Does this count...? I have a couple film books like Art of Pacific Rim.

>>51520715
So... an ERLL and a LL? Makes it kinda close to a Night Hawk for my taste.

>>51520680
I guess I need to really give Stratops a more thorough read-through. Thanks for the page number, man. I haven't done much (read: any) play with squadrons, the few games me and a friend did were pure warships, or warships with a few dropships.

When you say missiles will always cause a crit, do you mean cause a chance for crit (because cap missile) or that they always get a critical result?

Curse fighter superiority. It ruined naval warfare in the real world and battletech.

Yeah, it's a nice feature. Though as far as I know MM only uses the generic empty space map, 50x50 hexes with no terrain like asteroid fields or whatnot. Also since aerotech gets far less play than standard BT it's got more bugs and isn't as feature complete, sadly.

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>>51520730
Ah, thanks.

Haven't actually seen the Panzer Angel Grabriel book before and it looks pretty amazing.

>>51520743
Yeah. It can bounce around spitting out a 2/1/2 firing pattern all day long.

I dunno, just an odd case where I might actually prefer a stock-standard LL

>>51520840
I mean I can see it, if you wanted to use it as a sniper, but I figured at that speed it's gonna end up brawling enough that the heavier punch up close would be nice too. Still, two 8pt hits can be better than an 8 and two 5s, depending. It ain't gonna be causing any weapon damage PSRs either way.

>>51520730
I hope you take Muninn up on his offer to do some TRO commissions, your work really nails the BT feel for me

Been getting interested in Hell's Horses lately. What sort of mechs do they generally field? Big, small, fast, slow, jumpy, lots of energy weapons, that sort of thing.

>>51520914
Maybe after I finish the Thanatos. It's my top priority right now.

>>51520761

They always get a crit roll from hitting. Anything that does 2+ capital damage always gets a crit roll on fighters. They should then also get a second chance to crit depending on the missile size, AFAICT.

Fighters could be fixed for BT if they wanted to. Like make them do half or a quarter damage to WSes per bay or take away the obnoxious to-hit penalties on hitting smaller craft.

In empty space vectored movement isn't too bad, it's when you add things like asteroids (potentially mobile themselves) that things go sideways.

>>51520974

A mix. More inclined towards Quads than most and they had the first Quad Omni too.

>>51521069
OK, just wanted to double check. And yeah, I remember the missile auto crit chance.

They could, yeah. I guess the issue with that is that it creates a discrepancy between how much damage ASF weapons do against warships and how much they do against standard armor. And one of BT's big draws is that it tries to be consistent about this stuff. Removing the to-hit penalties and upping the capital multiplier to 20 standard = 1 cap would be how I'd do it, personally. Wouldn't require any changes to any sheets or (too many) rules, just an errata and change to the rulebooks that reference cap damage to standard conversion rate.

I can see that, yeah. Sorry vector movement didn't work out for your group. OTOH, I'm super jealous you have an aerotech group.

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>>51521170
I have a question regarding weapons: SRM2, SSRM2 and the Machine gun
Are they viable? Is there a point when having MGs is an acceptable idea (beside using half ton ammo and the so needed CASE)?

>>51521170

Well, it's me, one other guy, and sometimes two others who'll play if we use BT rules to simulate other sci-fi franchises like BSG. Not really dedicated, and we only play once every few months tops.

Squadrons desperately need a nerf to their effectiveness. I think anything up to and including a Squadron being hit for 10+ capital damage destroying them outright and capital missiles instagibbing one each time would be fine. Fluff-wise, WarShips are meant to be awesomely powerful leviathans that cause ASFs to shit themselves in fear, but in practice its usually the WarShips shitting themselves in terror if there's more than one Stingray squadron on the tabletop.

God help you if the enemy bought anything better than that. Or if you're running canon Essexes and SovSoys.

>>51521313
My bad, didn't want to quote

>>51521313

Everything can be used to some extent. Machine Guns are a bit crap unless there's infantry, and unless you're carrying LOLWARCRIMES numbers of MGs (like your design, incidentally) infantry would just *love* you to come in close enough to use them.

Streaks got a pretty hard nerf when Infernos went from being 2-rack only to just SRM ammo. The ammo conservation isn't bad but after 3055ish when the Dracs make the bigger launchers there's no reason to keep using the S-SRM-2.

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>>51521335
That's not mine, it's an official mech (a Dragon derivative) from the Japanese edition of BT
Like this one

>>51521039
Mind going into your work process a bit more?

>>51521313
Eeeeeh. You can spam MGs onto something decently fast and run it up to the enemy for a surprising amount of damage, but it's kinda cheesy. Against conventional infantry they do well, but you don't generally see conventional infantry a lot in BT games. SRM and SSRM 2s are just kinda not very good. The cluster table for 2 isn't very good, so you're usually better off with a 4 or 6 rack than multiple 2 racks. This isn't an issue for Streaks, but it's still an issue of "Why not use a smaller number of larger launchers?"

>>51521315
Fair.

Yeah, I can see that. Sadly with how unpopular Aerotech is it's unlikely we're going to see much in the way of rule changes and work on that front. Especially since where things are in the current timeline warships are pretty much dead outside of the clans.

>>51521315
>Well, it's me, one other guy, and sometimes two others who'll play if we use BT rules to simulate other sci-fi franchises like BSG. Not really dedicated, and we only play once every few months tops.

At that point why aren't you just using Full Thrust?

>>51521432
Not that guy, but Full Thrust isn't hex based, which some people prefer. Also learning new systems requires effort. And effort is hard.

>>51520032
Not that anon, but look up Catalyst embezzlement to get an idea of the company being dealt with here (tl;dr Loren Coleman used company funds to renovate his house and Catalyst just kinda shrugged). Some anons brought up some points about other problems (mainly with managment of the IP) in the last thread as well.

>>51521432

Because it's a BT group and we like the current rules set? Unless we plan an aero game it's something we play after the main event.

Besides, running the Galactica with a swarm of Vipers was fun. Not tough enough to wear multiple Peacemakers, but still tough enough to tank through what the SLN ships could throw her way.

How good are infantry LAW rocket launchers? Are they worth taking over SRM launchers?

>>51521572

>How good are infantry LAW rocket launchers?

Not very.

>Are they worth taking over SRM launchers?

Normal SRMs can be encumbering but there's the Light variant with the same range and better damage that isn't.

I'd go the Light SRM myself. Should have more warhead options in the RPG too.

>>51520011
>The negativity towards Catalyst in these threads confuse me so I was hoping I could get an explanation.

Loren Coleman embezzeled about $800,000 to pay for a new porch, and Catalyst shrugged and just didn't pay their freelancers. As a result of this shenanigans, Loren Coleman gets an award on the back of fucking over not only his company but the freelancers that among other things, made Shadowrun playable.

>>51521572
>>51521643
It's not necessarily a matter of one or the other. Look up Disposable Weapons in TacOps, which is how they're best used.

Basically, you can give a LAW to every member of any infantry platoon, allowing for a one time attack that hits quite hard (3x the normal weapon damage multiplied by the number of troopers who hit), and they operate normally otherwise. Even BA can use them with AP mounts/armored gloves, which isn't a bad way to make use of BA with multiple AP mounts.

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>>51513726
What's the scoop Munin? You know I am down to sprite the /btg/RO
>>51513807
Thank you very much

toosexytolive.gifrelated

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>>51521905
ultra heretical flat top ver.

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and redone Vindicator to more closely match Alex's art

>>51521905
Just wanted to get said sprite-ing started

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>>51521981
Cool, lets do this thing. What's the email so we can get the exchange started?

>>51519891
BT armor thresholds, stupidly large weapons arrays, and fighters. Those would need to go.

I think Epstein drives are a good deal less magical too.

>>51522023
[email protected]

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>>51520182
The thing in question about Heat Dissipating Shi- I mean Armor.

>>51521432
>At that point why aren't you just using Full Thrust?

Full Thrust is a shit-tier, meme ruleset. I don't meant that to be a shitpost, I mean that I've played it, and it's terrible. It's fine for running relatively "realistic" space combat settings where you take one or two hits and breach out and die, but it's awful at running anything even remotely cinematic. And any setting where you have huge spaceships with tons of survivability getting slowly stripped down in long clashes is cinematic by definition.

>>51522037
>BT armor thresholds

Wait, what's wrong with armor thresholds? If anything, those are more realistic than normal BT armor that's totally proof against anything as long as there's 1 point remaining on a location.

IMO, aerospace armor thresholds are one of the few instances of CGL getting a rule right. The deteriorating armor threshold optional rule is even better (threshold based on how much undamaged armor you have in the location at the beginning of the phase), but that does take a bunch of time to calculate and it does at a lot of complexity in practice, so I can understand why it's not the default.

Why do people hate catalyst?

I really love the stuff they've been putting out. The era reports, interstellar ops, combat manuals, battlemech manuals, it's good stuff. I'm really interested in seeing how the 3150 post-fortress goes.

Thoughts on the Lucifer and Chippewa fighters?

FUCK. I just realized the original Thanatos' arms were asymmetrical.

Fuck me with a combine for going with the Living Legends interpretation. Oh well.

>>51523105
Both shit.

Can't stand up to the Corsair/Stuka combo, which is why *we* won the FCCW.

>>51523091

Lot of different reasons, so it's hard to call it a well-defined thing.

Most of it definitely comes from the whole embezzlement scandal, which really seems to have hurt the company in the long run and annoys a lot of people here from an ethical sense, since the guy who did it still is one of CGLs owners. For people who play Shadowrun, this is a bigger deal, since a lot of Shadowrunner freelancers bailed after not getting paid / calling out the management.

I think the second-most common thing is that people here, used to a more free-flowing conversation in which you're free to call a guy a mouthbreathing retard, have had bad experiences with the moderated OF, which also colors experiences.

Then there's a variety of personal pet peeves and smaller annoyances, like CGL's seeming inability to keep the main box set in print, etc. Lastly, there's the group that just keeps blaming CGL for stuff FanPro or Wizkids did; since there's some continuity there, this is an understandable mistake.

>>51523105
I love the Lucifer R20. It's an unkillable brick in 3025.

>>51523416
People on /tg/ for every game I play always whine about various official forums because they don't understand they can't say "nigger nigger cunt faggot" everywhere on the internet. The children here have lost their filter after being uncensored too long.

What's the benefit of using laser rifles for infantry over basic auto-rifles? At a glance they cost more and deal almost half of the damage.

>>51523514
Laser rifles have twice the range.

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>>51523476
>The children here have lost their filter after being uncensored too long.

Well, the entire point of a forum is to get one's opinions across as clear as water.
That's what internet forums used to be.
Nowadays, they're not even forums, they're just casual chatrooms for a group of people.

>>51523476
I've noticed this a lot. Non-OF forums for lots of different games tend to be populated by a decent numbers of castoffs from that particular OF. Naturally they have axes to grind about fascist mods, big brother, muh freedoms, etc. (stop by what's left of the Sarna forums sometime to see some major grog / you're not my real parents posting in action). I mean, moderators often suck in general, but I agree that understanding the concept of different spaces and policies seems to not come easy for many anons.

>>51523558
Were they just casual chatrooms...

They're more like echo chambers than anything else.

I actually really like the GRF-3M.
Anyone else cautiously excited for the Battletech game that HBS is dropping?

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>Katrina found the proposed operation both exhilarating and bone-chilling. In it lay the seeds of salvation for her Lyran Alliance. Once the Smoke Jaguars had been driven from the Inner Sphere, the next phase would be to drive the rest of the Clans from worlds they had conquered. The task-force would fall on the Ghost Bears, and she could unite with the Wolves to crush the Jade Falcons and Steel Vipers between them.

>Kommandant Wendy Karner dropped her cross hairs onto one of the heavy-set 'Mechs featuring metal talons built right into the massive hands. Her targeting computer wouldn't give her a lock, but it did report the 'Mech to be a Kodiak. Wendy smiled. So the Jags are using Kodiaks. Good, we'll get experience with them before we go hunting Ghost Bears.

What if Bulldog had continued straight on into the Ghost Bear OZ like originally planned?

>>51523828
To add, I believe the Leviathans were still transports in 3059 and the Bears hadn't set up all their factories or any shipyards yet.

This is assuming the leapfrogging of Bulldog doesn't stop at the Jaguar worlds.

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>Watching old Korean historical dramas
>See emperor's throne room floor
>Can't unsee hexfield
I have been been playing this game since 85. It's affected me too much.

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>>51523813
>Anyone else cautiously excited for the Battletech game that HBS is dropping?

I am.
The only problem so far I've got with the game is the re-use of MW:O assets.

I can stomach the sub-par models in a strategy game but they're also reusing the horrible animations from MW:O for stuff like movement.
MW:O makes everything super-stiff and static and it looks terrible, especially once you get to running animations.

>>51523920
They are not reusing animations. They are making brand new animations, and the MWO models are better than any other version.

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>>51523954
MWO concepts are good, the mech modeling is bad. Textures tend to be shit, bad topology,...
It's perfectly visible in the MW5 trailer where the mech models look absolutely horrendous next to the stock UE4 assets.

And the videos so far have all shown them only adding to the animations but keeping all MW:O-made stuff in there.
So all mechs use the crappy MW:O walk cycles and only get good animations when punching or jumping up and doing stuff that you don't in MW:O.

Hey, I remember seeing a hex-based wargame that BT was pretty clearly based on. Blue and white rulebook cover, and it used periscopes to determine LOS.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

>>51523828
Well, if tricky vic can get his sister and therefor the formative LAAF onside, then the bears have had it. If not, than it really hinges on his ability to get the Nova Cats to bring their naval assets into play. If he can, then the bears are done. If not, the plan falls apart.
Also, if he can get the wrasslehogs going, then the whole job is 10x easier

I mean if I'm honest, the game is being released on DRM-free platforms so I'm probably going to pirate it and then if it's actually good and I get enough enjoyment out of it I'll toss them the actual asking price.
But I still want to hope, you know? A good BattleTech PC game might be pretty solid for the franchise as a whole. Also if it does well enough maybe they'll work on a 3039 Expac.

>>51524162
It's the same with me, I'd just loved if they'd had more readily available funds and staff to actually do the game properly without having to leech MW:O assets.
It's understandable because the amount of money you get from a kickstarter pales in comparison to real development funds so they have to cut a lot of corners but it would still be nice to have a proper game down the line with all the nice bits a fully fledged AA game deserves.

MW5 stands no chance of being good and Heavy Gear, as much as Mektek may try, will remain largely irrelevant and niche.
As such, Battletech is really the only game that can carry on the legacy and hopefully have some kind of future ahead of it.

>>51524162
Good BT games are absolutely essential to the health of the franchise: tons of people have said it was their gateway into the boardgame in the past, and I'm seeing that all over again since MWO and now this have appeared. It's impossible to say, but electronic games may be the only reason the tabletop game is still around.

Hey /tg/

Just some questions about using battlearmour in MegaMek. I've figured out you can only load them onto Omnimechs but is there a way to start them loaded, instead of taking a turn to do so? Are there any mechs are are better for carrying elementals? (i.e. suffer less blockage of weapons). Are there any other good ways to get elementals where they need to be apart from mech riding?

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Why did the writers favour the Nova Cats over the Ghost Bears for so long?

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>>51524421

>>51524309
>is there a way to start them loaded, instead of taking a turn to do so?
On the setup screen, right click the BA, there's a mount option that lets you pick what unit you want to stick them on/in.

>Are there any mechs are are better for carrying elementals?
Many of the light and medium original Clan omnis are built to favor arm loaded configs.

>Are there any other good ways to get elementals where they need to be apart from mech riding?
They can hop on omni vehicles the same as omnimechs. And they only block side and rear weapons too, which is almost never a big issue. Then there are various vehicles that can transport them inside too, look for any vehicle with 5 tons of troop capacity. The Indra, Svantovit, and Anhur are some basic Clan BA carriers.

>>51524593

All very useful, thanks? Does it say any which are arm loaders? So far the only one I've seen that is solid is the Nova but I am looking for good faster ones.

I have tried the Svantovit to good effect. I'm not quite sure how movement or loading on VTOLs like the Anhur works. I'll give the Indra a shot.

>>51523828

It was never originally planned to attack the Bears immediately, that was just Katherine being fanciful. The timescale on any round two would be at least a decade down the track to allow for a recovery and planning.

By the time Bulldog and Serpent were complete the Bears had actually completed their move to the IS and Lev IIs are launching in 3066, well before the IS would have been in any position to launch Bulldog II: Electric Boogaloo.

Then you've got the Bears being way stronger, their OZ fucking loving them, and general Bear fiat to contend with.

TL;DR: Absolute pipe dream.

>>51523710

This. The official BT forum makes a point of driving off new players and new posters along with anyone who disagrees with the core group of Battlemaster posters. At this stage they may as well make the de facto ban on people who don't have a Battlemaster into explicit policy, since the effect it will have will be virtually nil in terms of who posts and what they say.

>>51524421

Because he is a massive hypocrite who bitches the Arcas and Ursus are shit then spams them in games and legit argues the Lev II/III isn't very good and nobody on the OF knows enough about the naval game to point out how wrong he is?

I've played him IRL, he's not a bad guy as such, but the Bears are his pet faction and he takes things with them even more personally than Medron Pryde does the Taurians.

>>51524622

Didn't mean that thanks to be a question no idea what happened there.

>>51524632
>The official BT forum makes a point of driving off new players and new posters

Come on, man. I get that people don't like the mod policies or hugbox style or whatever, but the OF is very welcoming if nothing else. All you have to do is scan any of the "hey guys I'm new/back" threads to see that you're exagerating. There's one near the top right now.

>>51524632
>It was never originally planned to attack the Bears immediately, that was just Katherine being fanciful.
What about the Lyran officer who seems to be under the impression the Bears are next?
In any case, the question is about if continuing into the Ghost Bear OZ had been kept in the original plan.

>By the time Bulldog and Serpent were complete
Yet the Bears were still moving people at least three months after Bulldog was done. At Trafalgar a shipment of Bear civvies was captured well after Bulldog.

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>>51524632
S-Stormfury?

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>>51524018
The Battle of Stanrey and the Battle of Kalnock.

>>51524710

Well, the OF is very welcoming as long as you toe the party line. If you do anything that can even remotely be interpreted as 'complaining', you'll be in for a bad time.

I'm looking at the number of crew for infantry support weapons, what does it mean when it says 1E?

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>>51524808
Is Dougram that good?
It clearly is the alpha and omega of Battletech to the point I'd call the game Dougram extended universe.

But it didn't grab me anywhere near the same way VOTOMS did.

>>51524710

See how many of them stick around and what kind of receptions they get outside those.

>>51524713

The original plan for Bulldog was only ever focused on the Jaguars. It built off of the Combine's long assault on the Jags to keep their numbers down and units off-balance, intel would need to be gathered about the Bears. Victor heading out after Serpent was him going off-script but without that you get the Home Clans seriously pissed off and the Jaguars ready to lead a new Invasion.

It would take probably another 5-10 years for the IS to recover from Bulldog and get into position to attack any other Clan by laying Bird Dog-level groundwork.

The Trafalgar Bears seem to be one of the last shipments out of the Homeworlds too. By January '61, the Bears have all of one Trinary left in the Homeworlds, defending their Strana Mechty enclave.

Sweeping immediately into the Bear OZ would only serve to piss them off, and we've seen what it looks like when the Bears go on the war path. Even leaving aside the issue of Bear fluff superiority it's extremely difficult to see the IS wanting to push ahead with another round of attacks on the Clans.

I just can't see it working. Bulldog II would need to have a force at least 50% larger than the first to get back on par with the size of the Bears, and political disunity was enough of an issue after Sun-Tzu's tenure as First Lord. YMMV.

>>51524921

It only takes one person to use, but it's Encumbering which adds a penalty to use in close.

>>51524777

>someone I disagree with here must be someone I disagreed with there

Nice try.

>>51525019
It's good, but it is an investment. You have to actively watch it, you can't just let it play in the background and hope to understand everything that's going on.

>>51523025
I'm not arguing for BattleMech armor style. I'm arguing for no/minimal armor, especially where aerofighters are concerned. There are plenty of aerofighters that can and do take more damage than their ground-based equivalent, control rolls notwithstanding. I factor out control rolls because they're simple enough to avoid.

>>51525120

Armour limit for ASF should have been set a lot lower yes.

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>>51525072
>you can't just let it play in the background and hope to understand everything that's going on.

That would kind of defeat the purpose of an animated show now, wouldn't it?
It's just VOTOMS is a ride. The very first episode tells you the war is almost over, Kiriko is sent on a mission that seems pretty weird, he finds something, almost gets successfully disposed of and finishes escaping from the military with a tracking device.

Dougram starts off with a sequence that tells you it all went south and then proceeds with a planned ambush not working out for the government. Kiriko is at least a Red Shoulder, these few people were set up and still pulled through as if it was nothing.

>>51523025
>IMO, aerospace armor thresholds are one of the few instances of CGL getting a rule right. The deteriorating armor threshold optional rule is even better (threshold based on how much undamaged armor you have in the location at the beginning of the phase), but that does take a bunch of time to calculate and it does at a lot of complexity in practice, so I can understand why it's not the default.

Whoa hold on, I haven't played Aerotech since the first edition way back when. Is there some sort of maximum armor limit now for aerospace fighters? If so, my turtle fighters go bye-bye in a heartbeat.

>>51525276

TM limits them to tonnage X8 armour points which is ridiculous. A 100-tonner would need 50 tons of standard armour to hit that. Realistically 100+ armour per location is already stupid hard to deal with.

If you deal more than armour/10 in a single hit you roll for a crit chance in that location. That's what Thresholding refers to.

>>51525325
Wow. I've missed a lot sticking with the ground game over the years.

>>51525360

Firing Arcs also changed and there's no heat for movement any more either.

>>51525512
So expelling full thrust is consequence free? I'm so conflicted about playing a game of it now.

>>51525649

There's still to-hit penalties and issues getting arcs onto the enemy to consider but it sucks a lot less now.

I'm playing mekHQ and I'm trying to customize some infantry units. I changed a jump platoon to add SRM launchers as a secondary weapon, the refit was really easy and only took two days. Now I have two other basic laser jump platoons I want to upgrade to the new specification but if I try to refit them no kits are available on the list. If I try to upgrade them manually in meklab it says "that name already exists".

Do refit kits not work for infantry units? I could have sworn this worked the last time I tried it, and refits work properly for all of the vehicles I own.

I can still upgrade the other units by selling them and re-buying the platoons as the new design but it's a hassle to reassign all of the personnel.

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Some of my WoB 6th Division, just before heading out to smash my friend's filthy WD's.

Peace of Blake be with you!

>>51525057
I actually like and miss Stormfury.

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>all this space/aerotech discussion recently

So my first Battlecorps submission went well - ASF fighter focused - and I was wondering what other stuff /btg/ feels is under-represented in BT fiction. The spaceships in this space setting get so little love - but then again, so do the poor bloody infantry.

I'm considering the following for a new story:

* Dropship combat in deep space or low orbit during planetfall
* Combined-arms infantry combat in an urban setting
* Conventional-only forces (planetary millita or poor mercenaries) showcasing how they compare to 'Mech forces - and how they can win
* Two ASF jocks + Enemy Mine/Hell in the Pacific setup
* A MechWarrior who broke something trying to escape his crew chief alive

>>51525029
You might know this: what were the Bears main or favored aerospace fighters in the invasion era?

I was wondering what Tyra Miraborg may have been dogfighting.

>>51526069

The OmniFighters from TR: 3055 are as ubiquitous for everyone as the Omnis of TR: 3050.

Going by the fluff there they like the Sulla, Turk, Visigoth, Jengiz and Kirghiz more than the others.

Identifying the fighters Tyra went up against is pretty hard, the computer couldn't decide if they were Stukas or Corsairs. I'd probably peg them as Turks for the looks, mass, and faction but they could be anything.

>>51526069
Probably a Visigoth.

>>51524836
That's not true. I've had lots of heated discussions with people like Cray (who is a bit of a pick and is certain he is right about everything) and nothing has ever happened to me.

The only thing I dislike is that the moment something strays off topic they start moving posts off to the fan design forum or wherever, they have a huge stick up their asses about not allowing the organic growth and change in a discussion

>>51525858
Infantry refit seem to be buggy as all heck. Infantry can only be refit into a spec that is lighter than their current equipment. So a Flamer can be changed to Laser, Rifle or MG. However a Laser platoon can only be upgraded to SRM. And an SRM platoon can only be upgraded to LRM. Any other configuration just results in a blank refit list.

Is this working as intended or just poorly implemented in meklab/mekhq? Sometimes it works perfectly, I can refit a jump platoon to add missile launchers to a normal laser platoon, and then I can refit the upgraded platoon back into a regular laser squad at no cost (because they just leave the missiles at home).

But then suddenly if I buy a jump laser platoon it somehow goes from 3.75 tons and 80 BV to 3.5 tons and 61 BV. This "skinny" platoon can no longer be refit because it suddenly counts as a whole different custom type, but the weight and BV reduction seemingly happen for no reason.

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>>51526017

>>51526585
https://github.com/MegaMek
post an issue on the Mekhq issues section

>>51526585
>starshadow

>>51526412
Any idea what kind of SLDF fighters remained popular with the Clans for second line use? I'm curious which air frames of the Star League era remained viable as the technology marched on.

>>51523954
>and the MWO models are better than any other version

agreed
honestly that's the one and only great thing about the game

>>51526863

Only the Royals. It was discussed a few threads ago, but once you get XL engines into ASFs, they instantly obsolete anything which doesn't have an XL engine. All of the Clan Omnis have XLs, and only the Royals have XLs (and only some of those do), so unless the Clans are willing to waste resources on strictly obsolete fighters that are literally nothing more than flying targets, they would have used no IS designs but the Royals.

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>>51526017

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>>51526017

>>51526017
>Conventional-only forces (planetary millita or poor mercenaries) showcasing how they compare to 'Mech forces - and how they can win

As a tanker in reserve I fully approve of this. Hell, I might take a shot at this myself.

>>51523954
I was worried about the animations but if that's true, then great.

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>>51526017
>Dropship combat in deep space or low orbit during planetfall

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>>51526017

>>51526681
>>51526942
>>51526994
>>51527017
Stop avatarfaging, weeaboofaging and samefaging

>>51524162
>Also if it does well enough maybe they'll work on a 3039 Expac.

I hope the game goes from 3025 right to 3050. We don't need to advance so slowly

>>51526942
>>51526994
>>51527017
stop spamming your dracshit, victor

>>51527250
If anything, they should skip 3050 altogether and jump into 3070 like MW:O is about to do.

The reason being that the minor jump would not really do much for the IS and chances are there will not be a third expansion.
Clan Invasion is already done to hell and back and back again, if we only get one shot, I'd rather see some of the later stuff instead of the same thing most people have played through a billion times already.

>>51527814
The Jihad is the best era to play, so I agree. This isn't to knock Dark Age, which I also enjoy, but the Jihad really just had everything.

>>51526017
Giant robot team parkour drama.

Brokeback mountains with mech cowboys.

>>51527913
>Brokeback mountains with mech cowboys.

I'm actually surprised nobody's done that with Victor and Kai yet.

>>51527923
Victor had his flaws but Kai was too painfully cringey to read.

No one could endure writing that.

>>51527923
I also thought that, until I realized that the overlap between slashfic writers and battletech enthusiasts is an actual cold zero

>>51527923
>>51527952
Kai'd just be part of Victor's harem.

>>51528066
>victor enjoying being the middle in an omi/kai sandwich
I actually want this now

>>51527923
>>51527952
>>51528066
>not the love story of a Clan ristar and a whash-out who's slipping into the Dark Caste

It's like you don't even want drama.

>>51528105

I don't. I don't need to know what color strapon Kai would use to replace his own missing manhood.

>>51527913
>>51527923
>>51528066
>>51528105
>>51528151
>black Mechcommander Hunckback mechwarrior ejecting.gif

>>51527814
I would say that 3039 also has the "not been done to death" factor like the Jihad, but you're right that it would be lacking much stuff beyond introtech. I'd still prefer it over Oh Look It's The Clan Invasion Again.

I do love the jihad though so either would be fine by me.

>>51528105
I'd rather omi in a victor/katherine sandwich

>>51525165
I'd argue the same for warships. Space combat shouldn't look like naval combat or ground combat. It's something different. You'll never be able to carry enough armor to shrug off a hit, and the questions then become "what did it hit" and "how good is my damage control?"

>>51522988
>Full Thrust is a shit-tier, meme ruleset.
>I've played it, and it's terrible
>It's fine for running relatively "realistic" space combat

Okay, so first, you betray your "not a shitpost" statement immediately...

Second I guarantee you have not actually played FT, or, if you have, you only played with frigates and corvettes. A Maria von Burgund, a Komarov, Jeanne d'Arc, Maximilian, Inflexible, etc will take ages to go down, and even lighter ships tend to slowly fall apart as they take damage instead of just popping. And that's only Fleet Book 1 stuff. Not even getting into the Sa'vasku, the Phalons, the Israelis with their Stealth, the UNSC with variable hull dreadnaughts, the OU battleship which just piles on everything, or the IF with their stacks and stacks of PDS. Plus, you can make your own ships if none of the above are survivable enough.

Third, major complaints about AT - fighters rape everything, nukes are insta-kills, Leviathan II facerolls the whole IS...all problems like what you're bitching about for FT.

tl;dr shut the fuck up and don't make me come over there again.

>>51523416
>since the guy who did it still is one of CGLs owners.

Ackshually, technically it's his wife who owns it now. Or was, last I checked. Pretty sure she's cucking Loren with Randall though, if his occasional odd comments are anything to go by.

>>51528290
>Leviathan II facerolls the whole IS

The wall kills the Leviathan, Anon.

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>>51523828
ONE BULLDOG WASN'T ENOUGH

I need more WoB-posting pics

>>51528262
I absolutely agree. And I think we need to go further and apply this across the entire setting. Magic ablative armor is entirely unrealistic, needs to be swapped out for a penetrate/non penetrating shot system. Oh and obviously mechs have to go, they make no sense and are completely impractical.

Space combat in games is almost never realistic because "realistic" space combat isn't as interesting for most people as seeing massive ships sending out and taking huge amounts of weapons fire. Space combat in most settings is just wet navy IS SPACE because most people want wet navy IN SPACE.

>>51524632
>By the time Bulldog and Serpent were complete the Bears had actually completed their move to the IS and Lev IIs are launching in 3066, well before the IS would have been in any position to launch Bulldog II: Electric Boogaloo.
>Then you've got the Bears being way stronger, their OZ fucking loving them, and general Bear fiat to contend with.

On the other hand, you've got the WoB just about ready to get rolling. Not sure the Bears can handle that plus the rest of the Sphere knocking on the doors.

>who bitches the Arcas and Ursus
The hell is wrong with the Arcas? That thing is great.

>>51525910
Nice level II1/2

>>51526017
All of the above. Especially things focusing on BA or infantry dealing with the shitshows going on around them.

>>51526017
I would really like to see some stories about Vee crewmne that highlight the ways in which having multiple crew evens the odds vs single mechwarriors. Your gunner can focus on nothing but shooting, your driver just moves the vee, commander on comms and observation, etc. vs the Mechwarrior trying to do everything at once.

>>51528105
>>51528214
What, no Isis? Everyone always forgets teh FWL...

>>51528174
>>51527814
Jihad or bust. I'll shell out twice as much money if I can take a Level II to clean out the Goons.

>>51528357
I mean, that's what I'm hoping happens - the Republic expands the Wall or has some sort of localized version and the Lev II jumps into it.

>>51528394
I get what you're saying, but I think my point wasn't clear.

What makes BT great is the narrative detail. How did my 'Mech die? There's a thousand different ways for that to happen, and the record sheet informs how that happens rather clearly. Yeah, there's magic armor, but it's split between so many sections that catastrophic damage can make for some great details. What BT isn't is a game where, after a certain number hits, you declare "it's dead" without having a damn good idea of what happened.

Where Aerotech fucks up(and ground vehicles too, to an extent) is by providing the same magic armor whilst reducing narrative detail. What you're left with is a system with a narrative fidelity closer to simpler games without the simplicity. My dropship died. Why? Because it lost all of it's structural integrity. How did that happen? It lost all of it's nose armor and took a bunch of internal hits. At first blush that's fine, but there isn't much variation on that theme.

I argue that a system without the magic BT armor might make Aerotech compare well to the ground game, just in a different way: I think of a game where it isn't SI boxes being checked off, but internal systems being blasted and reactivated by damage control crews. Again, The Expanse type cinematics, not the same tried and tired wet-navy battleships slugging it out with a ruleset simultaneously too slow and not detailed enough to do it well.

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>>51528680
>I argue that a system without the magic BT armor might make Aerotech compare well to the ground game, just in a different way:
>I want lots of ways for my ships to fall apart


BRB, adapting B5:Wars to the BattleTech universe.
>To be honest, B5:Wars is one of the most fun space combat systems I ever played
>Being honest again, I agree with >>51522988, though not so vehemently. Full Thrust is not an enjoyable game system, though I can't quantify what makes it so. Played 2 dozen games or so of it and I can't stand it.

>>51528585
>I mean, that's what I'm hoping happens - the Republic expands the Wall or has some sort of localized version and the Lev II jumps into it.

I think you missed an I on your Lev III there.

>>51528680
That actually makes a lot of sense. I'm sorry for my previous snarky comment, and thank you for elaborating on your point.

>>51528747
>BRB, adapting B5:Wars to the BattleTech universe.
How is B5: Wars?

>>51528747
Interesting to see Full Thrust haters and defenders >>51528290 so close. Never played it, but it sounds like there's an interesting lesson behind why people like it or hate it.

>>51528747
.....whoa. Never played the B5 game, but yeah, that looks neat as hell.

>>51528857
>How is B5: Wars?
>To be honest, B5:Wars is one of the most fun space combat systems I ever played

READ NIGGA

>>51528747
B5 Wars is so great.

NEA, I dunno if I'd have to make a B5 thread to get it but I'd love to hear your thoughts on EarthForce warships.

how do you pronounce "rasalhague"?

>>51528747
As an aside, NEA, you saw what I meant by less armor more subsystem cinematics in the Expanse scene in
>>51519826
yeah?

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WRASSLE HOG

>>51528118
>love
>clan
Implying trashborn are capable of such an emotion.

>>51528937
Please tell me that's a doujin where pig orcs fuck busty blonde princesses...

>>51528982
Pretty sure that's from One Punch Man.

>>51528585
>What, no Isis?
So you're saying katherine, omi and isis? I like that idea

>>51528747
I don't know why, but that record sheet makes me think of Car Wars

>>51528882
Yes, I can see that. I was hoping for maybe just a bit more detail than that, however, as "one of the most fun space combat systems I ever played" is pretty subjective. I was hoping NEA would elaborate on what was fun about it, the kind of mechanics it uses.

>>51526900

Unfortunately the Royal fighters existed in more or less the same ratio as Royal 'Mechs. They were around but after centuries of combat use their numbers drop precipitously. By the time of the Invasion the Clans are flying exclusively second-line fighters and normal SLDF birds.

Royals in general were a clumsy retcon, but hey, this is BT so is there any other kind of retcon?

>>51528262

Although there was never a hard limit for armour on WarShips the old sheets only had like 400 circles. Nothing was even designed with armour heavier than that until shit like the Mjolnir, but then whoever designed the Lev II went full retard and shat the bed.

>>51528476

>On the other hand, you've got the WoB just about ready to get rolling. Not sure the Bears can handle that plus the rest of the Sphere knocking on the doors.

Unless the WoB are going to go full war crimes I don't think the IS has the stomach to put up enough troops so soon after Bulldog. Or ever again, because going after a Clan united like that would tempt retaliation from them. And if WoB goes full warcrimes, you can definitely count on berserker Bears reinforced by Home Clanners.

The troops might be there in theory but I don't think the military or political will is.

>>51528905

It's the butchered English version of an Arabic word said over a thousand years in the future, so however you like.

All this talk about Aero made me remember that ASF have shitty hit locations, when they used to be Cockpit, Nose, Wings, Fuselage, Engine. Bricks were harder to make then.

>>51528749

They have one II and at least one III.

>>51528924

Haven't played B5 but using canon (or near-canon power level) BT ships results in a ton of Threshold crits very quickly and you get to SI very fast.

Ships don't actually last very long once the serious shooting starts, and the odds of crew getting taken out is modeled by crits too.

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>>51526017

>>51528924
>As an aside, NEA, you saw what I meant by less armor more subsystem cinematics in the Expanse scene

>sorry for delay in responding; had to watch the scene since I hadn't see the Expanse before

Yeah, I think I'm on track with what you're thinking. I'll actually point out that the Threshold system *does* do what you want to do: when you take heavy hits there's chances to knock out critical systems. Plus, any to-hit roll of 12 creates an automatic critical hit.

The problem with AeroTech is that various armor and thresholding values are completely borked. The MECHANIC works pretty fine; it's all the legacy ship stuff from 2750 that they refuse to retcon away. In practice, what actually happens in AeroTech is that WarShips die much too fast.

B5:Wars does it in a different way. Each of those various boxes is a subsystem, and when all the boxes in the subsystem are crossed off, the subsystem is lost. Armor isn't something to be crossed off, it's simply a damage reducer (ie, a P-beam does 1d10+6 damage; you roll an 8, for a total of 14 damage striking the port railgun of the Hyperion Rail Cruiser. The value in the circle for the railgun is a 4. 14-4=10. Cross off 11 boxes from the railgun. It has only 9 so the railgun is destroyed.). The big "bricks" of boxes are structure. Losing all the structure from a location is a Bad Thing. Lose all your Primary structure and the ship goes down.

>>51528857
>>51529050

>How is B5: Wars?

It's a complex game, mostly as a result of vector movement. That's what all the thrusters on the record sheet are for. If you set it to cinematic movement, it actually plays quite quickly and it's got a lot of detail. The various countermeasure systems (intercept ratings) can make things a bit complex as well. The big issue with B5:Wars itself is that the secondary races (Drazi, Vree, etc) are WAY WAY WAY too strongly statted.

>>51528896

I can maybe go into it later. I have to take my kid to violin practice.

>>51526017
Anything infantry would be interesting as hell.

Some actual realistic BA tactics would be a godsend, as opposed to the RIP AND TEAR YOUR MYOMER we usually see.

Or, hell, regular Jump Infantry trying to be Ghetto BA because they're poor.

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>>51526017

>>51529155
This might be a case of bias, but out of the few Aerotech games I've played, I've seen warship death to crits exactly once. All the other deaths were from raw SI depletion. That one crit death was very close to SI death as well.

You're right in that there's a ton of crits racked up. The problem is that they don't adequately inform the player as to what is going on. You take a crit in a battlemech, you have some idea of what is going on. Your shoulder got blasted out because your arm armor got shot out. Or, at the very least, you took that crit there because a weapon hit that location. It all makes sense. In aerotech, there's about a billion "oh look docking ring is taken out" crits that don't mean much without context.

>>51529155
>They have one II and at least one III.

Right, but IIRC, the Lev II would take most of the IS warship assets to beat, while the Lev III would kill everything and still be ready for combat. So they'll need some serious plotdevicium to kill off the Lev III, the Wall seems like the right answer.

>>51529313
It'll be just another Bear in the Wall.

>>51529313
That just sounds really anticlimactic and boring to me. "Hey we built up how powerful the Lev3 is! Well it never sees combat and gets gibbed offscreen."

I'd rather it get destroyed in fighting off most of the rest of the clan's fleets, personally.

Also by this point none of the Great Houses or RotS have warship forces. I mean there's like 3-4 warships still around but they're all either heavily damaged, kept over the capital worlds of the Houses they serve for protection, or both. So the only thing that can really stop it is

A) ASF swarm bullshit
B) Plot magic
C) The rest of the IS clan fleets ganging up on them together

I think option C makes for a more interesting narrative. It's not like it'd be hard to come up with a reason for the clans to end up at each other's throats and engaging in a massive naval action.

>>51529295

One game might not be enough to see it. If you play more with things like the Lola, Essex, and SovSoy than bricks like the Nighlord, Avalon, Mjolnir and the like crits and deaths will be fast and frequent. Most ships in terms of designs if not fleet numbers in a mirror match can get to SI in a turn or two of medium-range fire.

>>51529313

I think it's more likely that the Levs will be used as plot devices to save the Suns (indirectly, but fucking up the Dracs so badly Julian can push them back past the 3025 border) and RotS by sending a detachment to reinforce them.

Ben Rome no longer influencing the plot does increase the likelihood of something bad happening, I guess.

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>>51526017

>>51529377
Are both of the Mjolnirs in service still, or did one get ganked? Yggdrasil and Flygia?

Two of them working together could do some serious violence even to a Lev.

>>51529152
what do they have now?

>>51529198
>ie, a P-beam does 1d10+6 damage; you roll an 8, for a total of 14 damage striking the port railgun of the Hyperion Rail Cruiser. The value in the circle for the railgun is a 4. 14-4=10. Cross off 11 boxes from the railgun. It has only 9 so the railgun is destroyed.

why do you mark off 11?

>>51529429
Nose, Wings, Aft.

>>51529428
Fylgia got ganked very late in the Jihad and was lost. SDS bullshit.

Ygg survived, barely, and is the Lyran's only warship as of Derp Age. After duelling the Falcon Nightlord she's Hesperus's guardship backed up by an absolute assload of ASF and PWS.

>>51529429
Nose/left wing/right wing/ aft.

>>51529428
The Flygia was destroyed in 77 by the WoB SDS. As for the Yggdrasil:

"In 3145 the Yggdrasil was refurbished and returned to service, making it the only WarShip available to the LCAF. It was stationed at Hesperus II and supported by a flotilla of combat DropShips and aerospace fighters."

>>51529198
>If you set it to cinematic movement

reee

If you aren't playing vector, you aren't playing a space game.

>>51529377
>"Hey we built up how powerful the Lev3 is! Well it never sees combat and gets gibbed offscreen."

Sounds hilarious to me.

Plus then the Bears get caught with their pants down when Star Adder and Bitches show up.

>>51529517
>>51529525
Well, that just leaves the question "How much support would Yggdrasil need to take down a Leviathan?"

How much of the WiE fleet is left? Would that be enough?

>>51529428

Yggdrasil is the only remaining ship the Lyrans have. Fylgia died in the Jihad.

The Lev II would eat a Mjolnir alive too. Mjolnirs can't Threshold Levs, but Levs can Threshold Mjolnirs. Mjolnirs can't nuke Levs, but Levs can nuke Mjolnirs. Mjolnirs don't carry enough ASFs to threaten a Lev, but Levs carry enough ASFs to destroy a Mjolnir at least three times over.

The minimum to take a Lev II down starts at around 3 McKennas for either a straight fight or to bring enough ASF and Assault DS coverage to fight it with assistance on both sides.

They are 100% bullshit.

I have many times before compared the Lev II to introducing the Hellstar into an environment where the 3025 stock UrbanMech is the next fastest, best armed, and best armoured design available and all games are fought on featureless salt plains.

This is not exaggeration or memery, Leviathan IIs are just that broken. Lev IIIs are even worse in their own way.

>>51529554

>Well, that just leaves the question "How much support would Yggdrasil need to take down a Leviathan?"

Either everything the other IS states have combined fully operational or not, or everything the Snow Ravens have.

Bear ground forces are also in the best shape of any faction come 3145. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

>>51529554
"How much support would you need?"
Pretty much every remaining damaged IS warship and most if not all combat dropshps/pocket warships. The Leviathan II/III is really powerful, man.

>>51529552
Yes, it is very hilarious. And if you want a "lolsorandum XD" sort of thing it's fine. But it's not particularly satisfying or interesting.

And everyone's going to be caught with their pants down when the Star Adder Manei Domini with their McKenna IICs show up regardless.

>>51529606
>>51529629

Well Shit.

>>51529378
>If you play more with things like the Lola, Essex, and SovSoy than bricks like the Nighlord, Avalon, Mjolnir and the like crits and deaths will be fast and frequent. Most ships in terms of designs if not fleet numbers in a mirror match can get to SI in a turn or two of medium-range fire.

How often, in your opinion, do deaths result from crits versus simply running out of SI?

>>51529657
>Yes, it is very hilarious. And if you want a "lolsorandum XD" sort of thing it's fine. But it's not particularly satisfying or interesting.

Sez you. Sometimes shit just goes wrong or you make a bad move.

>>51528525
The mechwarrior has pseudo-AI to help though. Read the entry on it in tech manual.

>>51529517
>>51529525
Can't believe they have no Foxes left. Did they lose all their shipyards?

>>51529715

Not very, but that has more to do with how many ships have ~70 armour or less on any given facing and many larger ships have at least two or three bays that can each hit for 60+ damage.

The 300-450 ish armour range would probably be best for these purposes but most ships have half that, tops.

>>51529554
WiE is completely dead afaik

>>51529978
Everybody lost their shipyards. Because reasons. Oh, except the Bears, of course.

This is why my solution to the levs is just the wrasslehogs nuking the fucker(s) from the inside to kick off their grand rebellion

>>51529940
>The mechwarrior has pseudo-AI to help though. Read the entry on it in tech manual.

Sure, but he's still only one guy. Plus wouldn't tanks have some pseudo-AI? At least the fusion engine ones?

>>51529978

The Lyrans only had 6 to begin with. Dunno what happened in the Civil War but that probably ate 1/3rd to half the fleet as it was.

>>51529997
IIRC, they're just mostly dead, with the tattered remnants running into the Periphery.

>>51530011

The Dracs apparently built another one somewhere because they constructed another Tatsumaki-Class ship at some point between the Jihad and Republic eras. Though that is due to Oystein being a complete fuckstick and useless at his one god damn job of keeping track of WarShips, so the only way around the blatant continuity error was for a WS to magically pop up out of nowhere.

>in b4 god damn Drac fiat

It literally does nothing except get nuked by the Wall.

>>51530016

Unfortunately the FRR loves the Bears even more than Australians love drinking beer and then doing stupid shit.

>>51530093
>Unfortunately the FRR loves the Bears even more than Australians love drinking beer and then doing stupid shit.
In canon, sure. But in canon they still have the levs. Ben Rome doesn't have to be obeyed in home games and AUs, which is what I meant

>>51530093
>tfw the FWL loses their entire remaining fleet because of one man's total incompetence

Why did the Bears built this monster warship anyways, rather than the Ravens? I mean, the Bears were hardly the only group doing big population transfers. And what happened to the mammoth Raven fleet? I can't even see what could threaten that, at its peak, and it could lose a lot of ships even piecemeal and still be huge.

>>51530235
Oystein was Thomas Marik?

>>51530317
It really makes no sense the Ravens didn't build one for themselves

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>>51530179

Yeah, fair call. It's just annoying that they handed such a pile of advantages to certain factions, to the point you have to make them act massively out of character and/or incredibly dumb to justify taking them away. That's kinda BT in a nutshell though.

>>51530235

>Expecting someone other than the Suns, Capellans, or Bears to have nice things

>>51530321
Thomas wasn't incompetent, though. He did a good job as CG given the cards he was dealt.

>>51530317

>Why did the Bears built this monster warship anyways, rather than the Ravens?

Ravens were helping the Bears built it. The original plan seems to have been that they're each get a Leviathan accompanied by a pair of Conquerors out of it but the Bears basically killed the project when they realised the IS had no WarShips and weren't going to get anything that needed that level of firepower to take out. Then they used the unfinished hulls as super-transports.

For what little it's worth I don't think the *original* plan was to ever actually make the Lev II a thing. It seems to have come about because whoever did it for the AT2 sheets wanted to have a giggle and nobody was really familiar enough with the rules set to spot how amazingly bad an idea it was to then go through with making it a canon thing.

The Leviathan III is literally inexcusable though.

As for what happened to the Raven fleet, I think they lost a few bailing out of the Homeworlds and then lost a ton during the Jihad. Mostly providing cover to the Ghost Bears in joint ops, as you'd expect.

>>51529729
It does, yes. And that doesn't make for as interesting a narrative, generally. And I don't know about you guys, but I don't trust CGL to be able to pull it off in a good way.

>>51529978
No one but the Clans have warshipyards anymore, dude. The jihad did some real bad shit. And most of the IS clans lost most/any of theirs in the IS leaving the majority in the homeworlds, and even then the Reaving means most are gone. IIRC this was a deliberate decision because people in the company felt that warships made mechs and ground stuff not as important. Though that's hearsay so take it with a grain of salt.

>>51530017
No, because tanks don't use neurohelmets to let the crew connect to the vehicle like a Battlemech does.

>>51530317
Oh don't worry anon! The bears built the Lev3 with the help of the Snow Ravens! Because reasons!

>>51530375
The WoB got some pretty nice things before they got turned into the RotS.

>>51530437
tl;dr Jellico is a giant faggot with a burr fetish, and Benny enabled him

>>51530444
>IIRC this was a deliberate decision because people in the company felt that warships made mechs and ground stuff not as important. Though that's hearsay so take it with a grain of salt.
Hearsay nothing. Herb outright said as much. He also hated that he became known solely for nuking things, because he'd done other stuff (presumably using nerve gas, cyborg supersoldiers and suicide bombings).

>>51530489

Jellico didn't build the Lev II, that predates him.

He is however the one who twinked the Lev II into the Lev III and keeps feeding misinformation about it not really being all that good.

>>51530548
My understanding was that he was also behind the push to upgrade the Lev II and all that, but I don't really care about the AT side.

>>51530765

It wouldn't surprise me. He spent a few years saying that the Lev II wasn't really all that scary (u fockin wat m80) and claims the Lev III is only a minor upgrade. Despite being even more nuke-proof than the Lev II, having a larger Aero contingent due to its expanded DS collars, and getting an upgraded weapons array.

You know, being better in every possible way than a blatantly broken design already was.

>>51527923
>I'm actually surprised nobody's done that with Victor and Kai yet.
Drakensis was actually heading towards a het version of that in his (unfinished, of course) rule63!victor fic, hilariously enough

>>51529991
That's what I'm talking about. We got crits but the vast majority of them(from what I've seen) are just useless rolls. Most deaths come from some arbitrary loss of an SI pool. It doesn't matter how many cargo bay doors are critted before you run out of SI, the system doesn't do a good job of informing the player *how* their ship died, unlike BT.

The current aerotech would be improved by moving to a more alpha strike-esque system. Lose the crunch and keep the bubble filling since there's hardly any narrative fidelity to lose.

Compare that to a system where armor is thin and death comes from crits. My ship died because the spine was shattered. My ship died because all of my reactors have holes in them. My ship died due to ammunition magazine explosion. Etc etc etc. Less random and largely meaningless bubble filling, more narrative detail.

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>>51518114

>DC aren't that fond of mediums for retarded reasons.

Did the Gladiator and it's abysmal showing against the Lyrans have anything to do with that?

Also, they think the Medium is a poor compromise of speed and firepower apparently.

>>51531005

Gladiator is retconned in, and it making a "poor" showing is stupid given its stats. It's a good design.

That fluff has been around as long as I can remember and has never really made sense beyond being another way for the Dracs to screw themselves over.

>>51530912
IMO even that narrative detail is kinda pointless, the key thing is the ship is dead. The only reason to keep track of shit in BT is so you can salvage, repair, and otherwise modify your mechs.

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>>51531091

Wasn't that strategy a success to a certain degree?

Their military was generally successful with that approach against the Suns and Lyrans till the 4th War.

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>>51529445

Because I made a typo.

>>51529552
>If you aren't playing vector,

Vector movement is boring and predictable. As are the people who enjoy it. Plus it makes practically everything that isn't a flying tank obsolete; there's very little point having extra thrust at your fingertips if maneuver means nothing because someone can always 180 their nose headed while maintaining their current vector and blow your fast, lightly-armored craft out of space.

>>51530179
>Ben Rome [CGL] doesn't have to be obeyed in home games and AUs

I wish somebody would have told them that. Especially for people who were volunteering when the "don't ever allows unseens in your games, even scratchbuilt ones" came out. I got some fairly serious trouble for posting batreps of a local, non-official game which had player-supplied unseens on the table literally the DAY that ruling came down. The fact that the game was unofficial didn't matter because "you represent the company, and if you had a shred of integrity you'd throw any unseens you or your group members own into the oven."

>>51530912
>We got crits but the vast majority of them(from what I've seen) are just useless rolls.

Ah, NOW I see what you meant. Yes, you're correct that most of the crit rolls don't matter to the game being played. However, once you start playing campaigns, you'd better believe basically EVERY "usless" crit matters. You're 95% right in pickup games, and 95% wrong in campaign play. Unfortunately, BT tries to support both.

Also, I agree that many times critical rolls in AT2 are superfluous, because of the damage values being thrown around. I've said it often before, but the core of the current WarShip game is fairly sound. They need to retcon away all existing ships, redo the construction rules, and make a few tweaks to the rules.

Finally, I agree with you that I'd like a system closer to the way B5:Wars handles crits, though. Shit starts falling off your ship from Hit#1 onward in that game.

>>51531265

Might have been a contributing factor. Not enough to explain it by itself.

Really the only reason the Dracs didn't completely shit the bed until the 3rd SW was that was what the backstory fluff said.

>>51531005
>Also, they think the Medium is a poor compromise of speed and firepower apparently.

Until XL engines existed, they were right. Mediums can go the same speed as heavies and carry a reasonable payload but no armor. Mediums can go faster than heavies but not carry enough armor or payload to matter a damn. Their only advantage over heavies were the lighter jump jets.

XL engines gave mediums the opportunity to go faster than heavier and have a payload big enough to be worth bringing onto the field at the same time. Because an SFE "well-armed" medium Mech with a PPC and an LRM5 is outgunned by a 35-ton light Mech which gives up only 1 MP to the medium.

>>51531160
>The only reason to keep track of shit in BT is so you can salvage, repair, and otherwise modify your mechs.
I disagree with fervor and the passion of a thousand italians
The details of how a 'Mech die are what make BT awesome. My units left arm went flying when a barrage of PPC fire penetrated the left torso and detonated the ammunition. My unit is fine other than the pilot being dead from too many pilot hits. Gauss headshot imagery is awesome. You get the idea.

In BT, dead is not just dead. How it died is just as awesome and important to good table fun.

Aerotech warships and fighters tend to be about "it died because something that isn't fully explained happened," and that's boring af.

>>51531334
>Vector movement is boring and predictable. As are the people who enjoy it. Plus it makes practically everything that isn't a flying tank obsolete; there's very little point having extra thrust at your fingertips if maneuver means nothing because someone can always 180 their nose headed while maintaining their current vector and blow your fast, lightly-armored craft out of space.

First of all, if you aren't playing vector, you literally aren't playing a space game, you're playing either a naval or aircraft game with matte black spray paint on the table.

Second, cinematic is somehow less predictable? "Hmm, I wonder if the opponent will go in a big turn or a small turn, wow, such unpredictability"

Third, making everything not a tank obsolete; you can change your vector a lot faster with more thrust. I don't actually know how BT does vector, but if you're using even a semi-realistic model, then a small ship plus a big engine will be more maneuverable than a big one with the same size engine. After that it depends on your game - if you're playing a game where a relativistic coke can is a lethal weapon then everyone will be zooming around trying not to get hit, whereas if you're playing a game where spamming missiles and slowly stripping off armor is the norm then you will want a lot more armor. Plus, the balance depends on how your game system handles large units vs small, just like BT - if a crit can kill your bridge like a cockpit hit can take out a Hellstar, then that's a very different game from one where ships are piloted by AI with subsystems dispersed through the ship.

>>51531665

>i don't know how BT does vector but let me tell you how it works in BT

Uh.

>>51531621

If you get a kill because of SI destruction it's like gutting a tank.

It's possible to get effective kills by taking out sensor arrays or disabling engines. Or even by blowing the fuel tank from a single lucky Barracuda hit on the right arc.

It's just that due to to the construction of BT ships- and not what the construction rules actually require, just due to the stats of canon ships- there usually isn't enough armour to avoid complete destruction in the space of a few turns.

And since recovery and repair of a WS is such an incredible pain in the ass, "it's dead, Jim" is usually more than enough information about what happens.

>>51531750
>I don't actually know how BT does vector, but if you're using even a semi-realistic model

I didn't say how it worked in BT. I said how it should work in any model that has even a semi-realistic model of vector movement.

>>51531665
>First of all, if you aren't playing vector, you literally aren't playing a space game

Funny, I was unaware that neither Star Trek nor Star Wars weren't actually set in space.

>wow, such unpredictability

Almost every special maneuver found in AeroTech is impossible when using vector movement. Having those options available by definition means that movement is less predictable. Vector movement essentially constrains you into moving in a cone each turn; the larger your delta-v, the larger your cone of possible movement. So yes, far more predictable. I truly cut my vector movement teeth on SITS 1.0 and SITS 2.0, and it's immensely boring. Once somebody has committed to a heading and has expending a meaningful amount of thrust to get there, then that's it. You know roughly where they're going to be, because physics is constraining their movement.

>if you're playing a game where [...] slowly stripping off armor is the norm then you will want a lot more armor.

This is BattleTech's method. And thus, as I said, light aerofighters are largely obsoleted. When each fighter essentially becomes a mobile turret (spending a maximum of 3 thrust to choose your facing without changing direction means that yes, you are in fact a mobile turret), facing and LOF don't matter *nearly* as much as armor and firepower.

It's similar to asking why you'd take 10 Vincent 39s to a 1-off tabletop scenario when you could take a McKenna instead. The Vincents can maneuver all they want, and it's not going to matter.

>>51531334
What do you think of the Omega destroyer?

File: minbari sharlin war cruiser.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>51531944

EA are actually something pretty close to a "horde" army in B5W. They tend to be less capable and less costly than the ships of the other major powers (Centauri, Narn, definitely Minbari, Vorlons, and Shadows. The secondary races are, as I said earlier, bullshit).

The standard Omega is possibly the most capable "common" ship in the EA (Warlocks, Poseidons, Shadow Omegas, etc aren't common). It's the toughest commonly-available ship by a *lot*, the armor values are 20-30% higher than anything else in the faction, and it's got good-sized structure blocks. It shines best as a fighter carrier, as EA starfighters are the strongest part of the faction. Launch Starfuries and Thunderbolts and support them from long range for ~8 turns with the heavy laser cannons (enough for a couple of volleys). Then after your fighters are depleted, move in with your pulse cannons to smack around the heavily-damaged ships; pulse weapons do a fixed amount of damage several times to the enemy they hit.

Omegas have a good defense grid for an EA ship, but the values aren't high enough to save you from a higher-tech ship that gets close. Range is your friend; most other factions have trouble matching the accuracy of the heavy laser cannons at long range. Use your port or starboard thrusters to slide right or left and keep your nose facing the enemy. Having MkII Interceptors instead of MkI versions are a big help. Note that having a dozen P-beams on the broadside is helpful, but not enough to dissuade a determined fighter attack; you'll knock down ~2 Frazi (Narn) fighters per round at best, and ~1 Minbari fighter at best (more probably none).

It's not a bad ship, and it's cheap. 925 points is pretty cheap; the equivalent Minbari ship is 1825 points in comparison. Two Omegas and their fighter complements will generally fight one Sharlin and its fighter complement to a standstill.

>>51531865
>Funny, I was unaware that neither Star Trek nor Star Wars weren't actually set in space.
See >you literally aren't playing a space game, you're playing either a naval or aircraft game with matte black spray paint on the table.

If your ruleset is "cinematic" you're admitting from the start that space has nothing to contribute other than aesthetics.

Having watched plenty of "spaceships" go swooping around in big slow arcs, I don't think either physics model is inherently more or less predictable. If you have played AV: Tactical and don't find it entertaining, then I dunno what to tell you.

>This is BattleTech's method. And thus, as I said, light aerofighters are largely obsoleted.

That's a result of the other parts of the system, not anything inherent to vector.

Ultimately, I think vector is probably for people who prefer the tension of trying to eke out every tiny bit of advantage over the medium to long term. If that's not for you that's fine. But it's flatly impossible to pretend that a "space" game without vector movement is, in fact, a space game.

>>51532144
Interesting...

What's your favorite faction to play?

>>51532242
>you literally aren't playing a space game, you're playing either a naval or aircraft game with matte black spray paint on the table.
>If your ruleset is "cinematic" you're admitting from the start that space has nothing to contribute other than aesthetics.
>But it's flatly impossible to pretend that a "space" game without vector movement is, in fact, a space game.

You seem kinda hung up on this

>>51532310

I like the way he's telling the two Aero experts who haunt these threads that they're wrong and stupid for liking the game and should stop and play something because reasons.

>>51532242
>But it's flatly impossible to pretend that a "space" game without vector movement is, in fact, a space game.

Much like it's flatly impossible for you to pretend that you're not sucking a billion cocks whenever you open your mouth in these threads, right?

>>51532441
being an expert in BT's aeros system means nothing, though.

>>51532497
In A BT thread it kinda does.

>>51532310
It is a bit of a pet peeve.

>>51532441
Well right now I'm only arguing with NEA. And I'm not saying he wrong or stupid for liking the game. I like Battlefleet Gothic. It's still not a space game for anything other than window dressing. What I am disagreeing with is the assertion that vector is a boring system for boring people.

>>51532482
I dunno man, a billion would be pretty tough.

>>51532517

But people are having fun THE WRONG WAY.

They must be stopped. AT ANY COST.

>>51531665
>>51532242
The thing is, "muh realistic space(battles.net)" is fucking terrible and boring. Without fail, it will eventually devolve into literally "rocks fall, everybody dies" and "muh von neumann nanomasheen" shit. It is never NOT a terrible fuckshow, primarily because of the autists who obsess over'realistic space combat' and 'muh hard sci-fi'. That shit isn't any good for anything but abstract internet masturbation, and you can take that to the damn bank

>>51532525
Your mom's a boring system or boring people.

>>51532482
wew lad

issues much?

>>51532517
>>51532497
it just means you know your way around one particular system.

>>51532559
One particular system which is the core topic of this thread.

In this specific place, it means *everything*.

>>51531750
>>51532441
>>51532482
>>51532517
>>51532545
>>51532556
Well done Muninn, you've triggered the fuck out of this guy

when you're resorting to "billions of cocks" and "ur mom" you should probably just surrender

I just want pirates with Jolly Rogers and hats and shit.

>>51532571
No, it means that you know about BT. Since Muninn and NEA were discussing vector in general, being an AT expert is nice, but hardly the be-all-end-all

>>51532525
There's nothing wrong with vector systems or preferring to use them. Just as there's nothing wrong with preferring not to.
I'm kind of glad our two Aerospace experts have a divided preference.

>>51532284

I usually prefer to play EarthForce or Centauri. I just play EA objectively wrong; I don't spam fighters and missiles. I like playing EarthForce with the older ships, like railgun-armed Artemis frigates and railgun Hyperion cruisers in large numbers, usually centered around a single large craft like an Omega. Again, I want games to be about the actual warships, not about spamming fighters.

Centauri are mostly because I love the look of their ships, and purple/gold is a badass paint scheme. Centauri actually sort of work in the same way I use EA ships; a couple of large craft (Primus Battlecruisers) and several wolfpacks of smaller ships (Vorchan frigates). They use very few fighters for ships of their size and use direct-fire beam weaponry which reduces the armor of the target; again, this is similar to my EA stuff - railguns ignore target armor.

The two factions I *hate* the most are Drazi and Vree. Drazi have a ludicrous number of forward-facing guns; a 525-point Sunhawk battlecruiser can outgun an Omega at close range and is hugely fast. Essentially, Drazi tactics are "charge forward and hold down the trigger", and that gets real boring, real fast. Vree have weapons capable to dealing Shadow-level damage, and they have the ability to rotate their saucers so that you have to hit different arcs each turn. Essentially how a ship can roll to present new armor? Vree can do that between 2 and 8 times, depending on the size of their ship, which means that it's impossible to actually knock their guns out. They also have gravitic drives that mostly ignore vector movement rules. Finally, again, the ship that's their equivalent of the Omega (it'll fight an Omage 1-on-1 to a standstill) is priced at 550 points.

>>51532578
Billions of cocks in your mom sounds pretty good, DESU

>>51532525

>Well right now I'm only arguing with NEA.

No dude. A few {You)s have been sent my way from you about this and I'm the guy who wrote the WS articles and talked about design earlier this thread.

The way vectored movement works with BT is exactly how NEA described it. Plus or minus the chaos of trying to fight in an asteroid field where shit is dying left, right, and centre from smashing into space rocks while trying to avoid smashing into each other.

BT as a system in general tends towards the cinematic over the hyper-realistic. Aero games are the same, and having played other systems I prefer BT's for that reason. The way big ships fight if you play with vectors people aren't going to bother moving at all because there's no point in risking being caught off-axis and unable to broadside. You might hate it being a "cinematic" system for people who can't into REAL space games but I'd rather do something that was actually fun and rewarded a bit of risk-taking.

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>>51532608
>I usually prefer to play EarthForce or Centauri

You're not such a bad guy. Gotta make the Republic great again, right?

File: 1412005990652.png (36KB, 510x1499px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 510x1499px

>>51532578

Hey /btg/. My FLGS is doing a campaign where each player is a Lance Commander in the Fourth Succession War. I'm representing the Lyran Commonwealth (The Federated Suns player and I already formed an alliance). My first lance can be made up of any four Light or Medium Mechs from Record Sheets/TRO 3039. I'm already picking the Commando COM-2D and a Hunchback HBK-4N. What should my other two Mechs be?

>>51532578
wow, what a faggot

>>51532708

I'd look at the Wolfhound, Griffin, Thunderbolt, Archer, Zeus, Battlemaster, and Banshee-3S myself.

>>51532712
yeah

>>51532708
A griffin-S and a Trebuchet would round things out nicely, since heavies aren't on the menu. If they are, substitute a Thunderbolt and an Archer

>>51532708
Only the 3039 book? So no Unseen?

Damn that's limited as hell.

>>51532768
Er, Anon, the 3039 book includes the Unseen, just sans art.

>>51532768

Huh? The Unseen are in there, it's just that they only have the fluff page and no illustrations because at that stage CGL was in full appease the grogs mode so the old art depicted the Unseen before the Project Phoenix revamps and they couldn't use the old art.

>>51532739
>>51532750
The Thunderbolt, Archer, Zeus, Battlemaster and Banshees aren't Light or Medium.

>>51532768
Any Light or Medium in the Battlemechs, First In Centuries, Star League and Project Phoenix sections. So yeah, 3039 Unseen.

>>51532793
>>51532802
What these two said.

>>51532708
Unlimited Griffin-1S Works.

>>51532549
Having a vector movement system has nothing to do with all that, though. It's purely about the physics model for your game.

Also you're in a BT thread so if autists trigger your own autism, you're in the wrong place.

>>51532578
Now now, "ur mom" is a hallowed method of dispute resolution.

>>51532606
Agreed. My problem is when a non-vector game is presented as realistic for space combat.

>>51532625
Literally the only actual posts containing argument were direct at NEA.
Starts with >>51529552
NEA responds, >>51531334
I respond back, >>51531665
NEA counter-response, >>51531865
I counter-counter, >>51532242

There's one clarifying post, >>51531830, prior to >>51532525, but that's not an actual argument post.

I've never said that a cinematic game is badwrongfun and that nobody should play it. First I said that if you aren't playing vector, you aren't playing a space game - it's inherently unrealistic or, if you prefer, the "space" is just an aesthetic label.

>>51532739
>>51532708

I should slow down to read more.

Lights: Mongoose, Laser Locust, Jenner, Panther, Wolfhound. Of those I'd go the Wolfhound, it''s really good.

Mediums: Griffin, Cronus/Wolverine-6M (salvage!), Treb, Crab. Crab or Wolverine-6M/Cronus are the picks of the bunch.

>>51532835
Your mom's just an aesthetic label.

On my dick.

>>51532835
Whoops, left off a sentence. Second, I said that vector isn't inherently boring. That's just opinion, though, so we can just leave it at "yes it is" and "no it isn't".

>>51532835

You left out the ones where I said I agreed with NEA, Your criticisms lumped me in with him because we share the same position and for the same reasons.

>>51532891
That's not actually getting a (You) though

Anyone can chime in on anything. For example, I agree with Muninn, but I'l go a step further and say you're both shitheads for playing plebian cinematic rulesets.

There, now every response to this counters Muninn's argument!

>>51532946
Common sense counters muninn's argument, you'll have to try harder than that.

>>51526017
>* Combined-arms infantry combat in an urban setting
>thunder runs with mechs
hell yeah motherfucker

>>51532891
Uh...where are those? Because I just scanned back up and as far as I can tell, nothing between >>51531334 and >>51532525
actually expresses agreement for NEA. The only two I can even see as candidates are
>>51531750 and >>51532441

>>51532965
Which part, about space games without vector not actually being space games, or the part about vector being boring? Second is opinion, and the first is just a fact. You can't in good faith argue that space somehow works according to "cinematic" conventions.

>>51528747
Omega vs McKenna, who wins?

>>51533019
You could save yourself a world of triggered autism by assuming that, unless somebody specifically says they're talking hard sci-fi, when they say "space", what they mean is by your terms "cinimatic space"

>>51533019
>You can't in good faith argue that space somehow works according to "cinematic" conventions.

Sure it does. In the game. How it works IRL doesn't matter at all because that just devolves into useless von neumann wank.

All sci-fi is inherently unrealistic, even the "hard' stuff, and you're just bullshitting yourself if you believe otherwise.

>>51533069
>the game is now reality

Into the trash you go

>>51530321
Nah, like half the FWLN wasn't listed as dead/suborned. Oyster just said ALL DEAD.

>>51533085
That's what your mom probably should've said when she saw you.

>>51533045

No way to tell. AFAIK, there's insufficient data on the Omegas to make a comparison. Acceleration, weapon range, weapon power output - all that data isn't locked down as much as it is in BattleTech.

I'd guess the McKenna would win, simply based on the fact that it's got a LOT more large-scale weapons and twice the fighter complement, and that BT fighters are clearly and blatantly superior to B5 fighters. But depending on the actual stats on the Omega's weapons, that might change. For example, if Omega heavy lasers could fire accurately at three times the range of the McKenna's HNPPCs, then it might be different.

>>51533143
>>51532850
>>51532618
>>51532556
babby's first day on 4chan?

>>51533019

And I then had whoever it is that's backing your argument up hit me with (You)s for disagreeing with your points and theirs.

Not necessarily you, but people on your side of the argument.

>You can't in good faith argue that space somehow works according to "cinematic" conventions.

You can, however, argue that the results of BT movement are due to vectoring and the movement system merely abstracts it into a more interesting and usable form than simply having spinning turrets moving in straight lines.

>>51528905
"Rassal-Haag"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQGMK3iUWLE

If you believe Duncan Fisher

>>51533045
Omega outranges the McKenna substantially, can perform tactical jumps to outmaneuver it, and Starfuries far outpace the capabilities of any BT fighter. Not really much of a fight.

File: 1447469263086.png (49KB, 500x501px) Image search: [Google]

49KB, 500x501px

>>51524482
Have a fixed ERPPC

File: fixed_it.jpg (237KB, 715x976px) Image search: [Google]

237KB, 715x976px

>>51533269

Y'know, you're alright anon.

>>51520442
Dang it, I can't identify #1 and #7; I love the style though. I didn't much care for the 3075 units mostly, but these all look lovely!

>>51533327
1 is Templar
7 is Hauptmann

>>51533327
L-R: Templar, Akuma, Thanatos, Verfolger, Hellfire, Saggitaire, Hauptmann.

>>51533341
Is the Templar any good? As good as the Hauptmann?

Can't decide between Davion and Steiner.

>>51533369
They're both good. And they're omnis, so if you don't like any of the configs, make your own.